the roku channel

If Roku’s third quarter earnings call could be distilled into a single phrase, it would be “early days.” (With “bullish” as a runner-up, perhaps.)

The average CTV platform now authorizes 30 SSPs to sell its inventory. And one of the most noticeable effects of increased SSP saturation in CTV has been higher costs due to SSP reselling.

In today’s newsletter: Why Apple’s SKAdNetwork 4.0 is a bust; advertisers are irked by Google’s optimization-driven demand for different creative formats; The Trade Desk releases a baffling list of top 100 publishers.

Roku is starting to bounce back from a slump in ad sales growth thanks to new ad inventory, more programmatic availability and improving economic conditions.

Programmers like free ad-supported TV channels because they’re an onramp to bring more viewers into ad-supported video-on-demand environments.

Roku’s total Q2 revenue was $764 million, up 18% year-over-year, but was relatively flat compared with last quarter, when revenue clocked in at $734 million. CFO Steve Louden was probably referring to that plateau when he warned of a TV ad spend hiatus. US advertisers are pulling back in reaction to inflation and supply chain shortages.

The Roku Channel was born in 2017 as a licensed third-party content hub to woo audiences toward streaming. Then, the channel began courting original content in 2021. The wider the content distribution, “the more engagement we can drive with our advertisers and the more we can monetize and invest in content,” said Katina Papas Wachter, head of ad sales and strategy at The Roku Channel.

Roku’s revenue for the fourth quarter was up 33% YOY, thanks to streaming and ad sales – but it’s losing money on its signature player devices. It’s also losing money licensing its operating system to manufacturers using it to create Roku TV models. Roku was the top streaming platform across the US, Canada and Mexico in terms of hours streamed – but investors still aren’t impressed.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Ya-Who’s There?  Yahoo (which is back, in case you haven’t heard) launched an ID-free targeting solution on Thursday. The company has a proprietary ID, which it calls the Yahoo ConnectID. But even today, 30% of ad impressions carry no advertising ID, Yahoo says […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Grabbing Share Watch out, Google and Facebook – Amazon is catching up. According to eMarketer, Amazon’s share of the digital ad market in the United States grew to 10.3% last year, up from 7.8% in 2019, The Wall Street Journal reports. It’s expected to make […]